Ephemeris: 02/19/2025 – Where have the naked-eye planets wandered off to this week?
This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, February 19th. Today the Sun will be up for 10 hours and 40 minutes, setting at 6:17, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:34. The Moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 1:59 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 7 PM this evening four of the five naked eye planets will be out. Starting from the West we have Venus the brightest of all in the west southwest. Far below it, near the horizon, will be the much dimmer Saturn, which we are about to lose, or may already have, to the evening twilight. Jupiter, the second-brightest planet will be high in the south. It has reversed course and is heading back eastward now. Farther below it is the spectacular constellation of Orion the hunter. The fourth planet out is Mars, the third-brightest planet now, with its distinctive reddish hue, west of the stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and in the east-southeast.
The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT – 5 hours). Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
A 7 PM February 19, 2025 planet panorama. Venus and Saturn are in the west-southwest, and Jupiter is in the south-southeast. Mars is in the east. This looks like the last time Saturn will be visible in the evening sky for a while. The in this projection the ecliptic (not shown) is a straight line, so the planets and Moon nearly line up, but the horizon is curved. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using Stellarium.
The Moon tomorrow morning, February 20, 2025, as it might appear in a small telescope at 6 AM, in the south. Selected features are labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Telescopic Venus, Jupiter and Mars (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. All the planets are shown for tonight, 8 PM, February 19, 2025. Apparent diameters: Venus 42.4″ and rapidly growing as it approaches us, 22.9% illuminated, it now appears larger than Jupiter; Jupiter 40.8″; Mars, 11.8″. Planetary surface detail is more subtle than shown here. The ” means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on February 19, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 20th. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, February 19 and 20, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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